Spiced Cabbage Rolls

Today I was trying to find a way to use up the rest of a savoy cabbage that was wilting fast. I also had some ground beef defrosting in the fridge, so cabbage rolls immediately sprung to mind. The beef is quite high in fat, which is great for flavour and tenderness but not so great for my waist line, so I decided to mix it with some bulgur and vegetables to bulk it up and spread the load.

The bulgur made me think of tabouleh and middle-eastern dishes with raisins, which lead me to a new twist on cabbage rolls. The actual spices I used could be considered Moroccan or Indian. I just consider the result very good!

I only had enough cabbage leaves to do a half recipe (enough to serve 2 people) of cabbage rolls, so the rest of the meat mixture is now macerating in the fridge, ready to be turned into a little meat loaf tomorrow.

Cabbage Rolls

1 Savoy cabbage

Filling
1/3 cup bulgur
1/2 cup boiling water
1/4 cup raisins
1/2 pound ground beef
1/2 onion, minced
1 small carrot, grated
1/2 stalk celery, minced
2 teaspoons dried mushrooms, crumbled
1-2 tablespoons of mirin (rice wine vinegar)
1 tablespoon tomato paste
1/2 egg, beaten
1/2 teaspoon salt
pepper, to taste
1/8 teaspoon cinnamon
2 pinches nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon turmeric
1/4 teaspoon paprika, smoked
3 tablespoons bread crumbs

Sauce
2 medium onion, thinly sliced
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 tablespoon oil
1/2 teaspoon cumin
1/2 teaspoon turmeric
2 pinches cinnamon
3 cups water or stock

Make the filling: Pour the boiling water over the bulgur and raisins and let soak for 15 minutes until the bulgur is plumped up. Combine the meat, bulgur and raisins, vegetables, egg, tomato paste, mirin, and spices. Let macerate in the fridge for 4 to 24 hours. 

Prepare the cabbage leaves: Bring a large post of water to the boil. Split the leaves off the cabbage and cook for 5 minutes. Drain and run the cabbage leaves under cold water, then carefully dry in a tea towel. Cut the thickest part of middle rib out of each leaf, like cutting out a thin piece of pie. Reserve the ribs for the sauce.

Assemble the cabbage rolls: Take a leaf and put 1 or 2 tablespoons of the filling in the center. Fold the corners over, then roll the leaf into a ball. Roll it into another leaf. Put it into a tea towel and gentley twist to compress the cabbage roll into a round ball and squeze out some excess moisture. Repeat until the filling and cabbage leaves are used up.

In a large pot, saute the onions until translucent, then add the garlic and cook for another minute or so. Add the spices, cooking for another 2 minutes, then add the water and reserved cabbage ribs, and stir. Gently nestle the cabbage rolls into the sauce, ensuring that the sauce comes almost to the top of the cabbage rolls. Cover tightly and simmer for a half hour.

Serve over rice with your choice of vegetable. 

Vietnamese Pho

It's not that I haven't been cooking the last few weeks, it's just that with my little point-and-shoot camera, I can really only get decent pictures during the day. In the late afternoon and evening, when I'm usually cooking, I need to rely on artificial light (and standing absolutely still!) or on the flash, and that leads to orange blurry pictures or to garish glistening ones. My birthday is coming up next week so maybe I should gift myself a better camera and decent flash.

Anyway, one of the dishes I have been living off of for most of this week is a Vietnamese beef soup called Pho (pronounced like French feu).

It starts with charring the ginger and onion over an open flame for 15 minutes. I used the grill from my old toaster oven for this and feared the worst with regard to smoking up the place, but it worked better than I had expected (I did open some windows!). After parboiling some beef bones, you throw all the ingredients in a big pot and simmer for 3 hours uncovered, taking the beef out after 1.5 hours. Keeping the pot uncovered lets more liquid evaporate and intensifies the flavour, which is something I plan to do more often. The broth produced is delicious and wonderfully fragrant, and the cooked beef is fabulous—completely imbued with the wonderful flavours of star anise, cinnamon, ginger, garlic and onion.

My biggest caveat is that it ended up being much too salty for my taste. The recipe calls for a lot of salt in making this stock, reasoning that the noodles and other ingredients it goes over are bland, but I had to add boiling water to reduce the salt levels, and for a stock this good, that was a shame.

I varied the vegetables and noodles that went into the broth a lot—depending on the day, it could be savoy cabbage and bean sprouts, or mushrooms and green peppers that had been stir-fired in sesame oil first. Today, I thinly sliced some fillet of beef and put it on top of the noodles and vegetables before pouring over the hot stock. It was great.

Vietnamese Beef Broth

Adapted from Viet World Kitchen
I am just providing the broth ingredients and an abbreviated method here.
I've reduced the salt by half, added some garlic, and given a range for the star anise, since I found it was a bit too strong in the balance.
Check out the original source for all the authentic vegetables and garnishes and a more detailed method.

2 medium yellow onions
4-inch piece ginger
5-6 pounds beef soup bones
6 liters of water
3 cloves of garlic, smashed
3-5 star anise
6 whole cloves
3-inch cinnamon stick
500 grams beef chuck cut into 1 inch cubes
2 teaspoons salt
4 tablespoons fish sauce
1 -inch chunk) yellow rock sugar (I used Indian jaggery)

1. Over a grill or flame, char the ginger and onions, turning them from time to time. After 15 minutes, rinse the ginger and onion under cold water, peel and slice the ginger and remove the charred outer layers from the onions.
2. While the ginger and onion char, parboil the beef bones (there should be no or little meat on them) for 2-3 minutes. Then discard the water, rinse the bones and rinse the pot to get rid of impurities in the stock.
3. Now put all the ingredients in a large pot, bring to a boil, then turn down to a bare simmer. Simmer for 1.5 hours, then remove the beef with a slotted spoon. Let it cool in cold water for about 10 minutes before draining and refrigerating it. (This is to prevent it from turning dark.)
4. Simmer the broth for another 1.5 hours. Strain the broth through a sieve lined with cheesecloth and let it cool down so that you can easily remove the fat. (At this point, if you've got good marrow bones, scoop out the marrow and spread it on some melba toast and eat right away. Cook's treat—marrow has to be hot and it doesn't keep that well.)
5. When you come to serve the soup, soak some rice noodles (or ramen, or use wok noodles). Heat the broth to boiling point. Add the reserved beef to warm it up. Julienne some vegetables, and stir fry them or simmer them briefly in the broth until tender. 
6. Place the noodles, vegetables, and beef in serving bowls and add the hot broth. Garnish with cilantro, chillis and mint. 

Boxing Day 2010

Today I had 5 people over for dinner, including two confirmed meat eaters and a pisco-vegetarian. I have a freezer-drawer full of beef from highland cattle that graze wild in Dutch nature reserves (ordered from Stichting Taurus) so that determined the meat side of the menu.

Hors d'oevres

• Mackerel rillettes 
• Baba ganoujh
• Cranberry Paté
• Cream crackers and melba toast

Starter

• Mimosa spinach salad (with only one mushroom, since that's all I had left! )

Main

• Beef pot pie (minus the cheddar cheese and using Judith Jones pastry recipe)
• Salmon en croute (same pastry)

Sides

• Braised leeks
• Grilled tomatoes

Dessert

• Blueberry Cobbler

The mackerel rillettes, which I made with wasabi instead of horseradish, proved surprisingly popular, and baba ganoujh (Jane Brody's recipe) always goes down a treat. 

I had planned to serve mashed potatoes but forgot to cook them, so I served some bread instead. Both the salmon and the beef pot pie were delicious, although I think the pastry might have been too rich and buttery. I had made the beef stew on Christmas eve and cooked it for another hour today before putting te crust on top. I think the extra wait time did wonderful things for the flavour.

This is the first meal I've ever served in which there were absolutely no leftovers. I rather regret that, I would have liked some leftover beef! I will definitely make the beef again just as a stew. 

Unfortunately, the only pictures are of the braised leeks, which even non leek lovers liked.

Christmas Dinner 2010

The Dutch are not big turkey eaters and they don't tend to eat the same thing every Christmas, although duck, hare, and venison seem to be popular.

Me, I'm a traditionalist and like to have poultry at the center of my Christmas dinner. However, turkey is a bit much for a single person, even with guests, so I'm making chicken. Today's menu:

Mushroom Soup
Dry-brined roast chicken
Bread-potato stuffing

Sweet and sour cippoline onions

Cranberry port sauce

Roasted squash, mashed with butter, salt and pepper

Braised brussels sprouts

Apples in Calvados

Mushroom Soup

This is a lightly-bound soup that depends for its flavour on the mushrooms and a good rich-tasting beef stock, or fond. I use a very good commercial fond, but you can of course use a good home-made stock.

2 tablespoons olive oil
1 tablespoon butter
300 grams mushrooms, thinly sliced
1 red onion or large shallot, sliced in very thin semi-circles
60 ml sherry
1 tablespoon flour
1 tablespoon fresh thyme
salt and pepper to taste
parsley for garnish

1. In a large saucepan, heat the oil and butter over medium high heat, until the butter foam subsides.
2. Add the mushrooms and sauté until they release their moisture.
3. Add the onion and sauté for another 1 or 2 minutes.
4. Add the flour, sherry, and thyme and continue to cook for 2 minutes.
5. Add the beef fond, and simmer for  15-20 minutes.
6. Serve and garnish with parsley.

Apples in Calvados

This recipe comes from a cookbook put out by the largest supermarket chain in Holland, Albert Hein. It is a simple, light dessert that can be made a bit richer by serving it with ice cream. I got it from my aunt, and she is the one who is making it today.

2 apples
100 ml calvados
1 packet vanilla sugar*
3 tablespoons sugar
grated lemon peel
2 tablespoons lemon juice
1 1/2 tablespoons butter, ice cold

1. Peel and core the apples and cut them into 6 slices.
2. In a saucepan, bring the calvados, vanilla sugar, lemon peel, and lemon juice to a boil.
3. Add the apple slices, lower the heat, and cook gently for 10 minutes.
4. Spoon the apple slices into dessert bowls.
5. Beat the butter into the warm calvados sauce and then pour over the apples.

* If you can't get vanilla sugar, try adding a teaspoon of sugar and a 1/4 teaspoon pure vanilla extract.

Chicken with Pomegranate

I recently acquired a new item for the kitchen—a lovely enameled cast-iron cocotte from Staub.

Of course, a new pot requires a new recipe, so I decided to break open a tome that has been sitting on my shelves for years and getting no use.

The Silver Spoon is supposedly the Italian bible of cooking, and it contains a huge number of recipes, but the layout and instructions are not inviting. The instructions are written in one long paragraph, which is a pain to follow when you're half way through and need to check something. Worse yet, instructions can be incomplete, unclear, and quantities imprecise. Even for someone who doesn't always follow instructions and quantities to the letter, this can be frustrating.

But it does seem such a waste to have it sitting there, not getting spattered by water, wine, and sauces. So I decided to make Gallina alla Melagrana. Well, actually, I adapted it. The recipe calls for roasting the chicken whole, but I decided to cut it into pieces and braise it in the oven. I also add the soaking water from the soaking the porcini mushrooms, which the recipe does not call for.

The pomegranate was an interesting feature. The seeds are both tart and sweet, and the resulting dish reminded me of having cranberry sauce as an integral part of the chicken. I liked it.

Chicken with Pomegranate

2 tablespoons olive oil
2 tablespoons butter
1 chicken, cut into pieces
2 small onions
20 grams dried porcini mushrooms
4 pomegranates
1 cup cream
4 leaves of sage (or 1/2 teaspoon dried)
salt and pepper

1. Preheat the oven to 350F.
2. Heat half the butter and oil in a casserole, Dutch oven or other dish that can go from stove-top to oven.
3. Fry the chicken pieces, turning them from time to time until browned.
4. Add one onion, whole, to the chicken, sprinkle a little bit of water on it, and roast in the oven for 50 minutes.
5. Put the dried porcini in a bowl and pour on boiling water to cover. Let it stand and soak for 15 to 30 minutes.
6. Meanwhile, cut the pomegranates into 6-8 segments and scrape the seeds into a pot or large bowl, using your fingers. 
7. Reserve some seeds for garnish and crush the rest with a potato ricer to extract the juice. (Since I don't have this, and my potato masher didn't do a great job, I ended by just squeezing the seeds with my hands and pressing them through a sieve. The seeds still retain a fair amount of flesh so they still look good when added to the dish at the end.)
8. After about 45 minutes, take the chicken out of the oven and add the pomegranate juice, pouring it through a sieve, and reserving the seeds. Return the chicken to the oven.
9. Chop the remaining onion, and sauté it in the remaining oil and butter for about 5 minutes.
10. Drain the mushrooms, reserving the soaking liquid, and add them to the frying onions. Cook for another 10 minutes and then add them to the casserole.
11. After 50-60 minutes in the oven, the chicken should be tender, at which point you can remove it to a plate along with the whole onion. (I like chicken to be very well done and the leg meat to almost slip of the bone.)
12. Chop the onion, and return it to the casserole.
13. Put the casserole on medium heat on the stove, add the reserved mushroom soaking water, and reduce the liquid by about half.
14. Add the cream and sage and heat through. Add salt and pepper to taste. 
15. Pour the sauce over the chicken and garnish with reserved pomegranate seeds. 

Greek Onion-Leek Pie

Last  week I saw a recipe in my daily paper for a onion, leek and feta pie. It sounded really appealing, and it did turn out to be very tasty. The original recipe called for phyllo pastry, but my local Turkish greengrocer didn't have it so I used something similar that they did have. The pastry leaves are less thin and fine but also don't dry out as quickly. You also don't need to use as many layers (2 on the bottom, 2 on the top.)


I think I didn't put quite enough dill in the filling. It really can stand a lot. I also think that this recipe could  do well with one or two eggs added. I reduced the recipe by about one third, but it still ended up being enough for 4-6 servings.


Update: I've now made this recipe a number of times. I've used oval, square, and round dishes, I've made self-contained packets, I've used phyllo dough instead of yufka dejblade (as it's called). I've adopted Kaye's tip of sprinkling sesame seeds between the dough layers. It always works. 

Greek Onion-Leek Pie

10 leaves phyllo pastry
olive oil
2 large onions
2 large leeks
4 green onions
salt and pepper
200 grams of feta cheese
6-8 tablespoons of fresh dill, chopped
3-4 tablespoons breadcrumbs
2 tablespoons sesame seed

1. Cut the onions in half and slice them thinly. Slice the leeks in rings, including as much of the green as is tender. Slice the green onions in rings. Sauté the onions in the olive oil at medium heat until translucent.
2. Add the leeks, green onions, and salt and cook until tender. Turn the heat down to medium low and add a bit of water if the vegetables threaten to turn brown. Let them drain in a colander.
3. Preheat the oven to 350 F. 
4. Crumble the feta cheese, and mix in a bowl with the vegetables, chopped dill, and breadcrumbs. Add salt and pepper to taste (I like lots of pepper!)
5. Grease a square or oval casserole or baking pan with olive oil. 
6. Working with 1 leaf of phyllo dough at a time, use a pastry brush to lightly oil each leaf with olive oil. Lay 5 oiled leaves in the bottom of the casserole, with the leaves overhanging the sides. 
7. Spoon in the onion-leek-feta filling, smoothing it out. Fold the overhanging phyllo leaves over the filling, and lay the remaining phyllo leaves over top. Tuck the overhanging edges under, then sprinkle with sesame seeds.
8. Bake for about 40 minutes until golden brown.

Squash Mushroom Risotto

"I'm late, I'm late", as the white rabbit cried. I have to catch up on some recent recipe experiments, and since we're deep into fall, I'll start with some warming comfort food.

This is another story of leftovers. I had a container of squash, some homemade chicken stock that got defrosted by mistake, and some mushrooms that had seen better days and needed to be used up NOW. I've seen recipes for both squash risotto and mushroom risotto, so that was my inspiration. Risotto is such an adaptable base for all kinds leftover variations. I can imagine it for leftover pumpkin from Halloween (maybe reduce the stock, since pumpkin has a higher moisture content than squash, and use fresh sage as a flavouring).

These days I don't actually follow a recipe for risotto, just a technique, but I provide some standard measurements in this 'recipe'. I'm afraid the measurements are approximate.

Squash Mushroom Risotto

3 cups chicken stock
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 onion
3/4 cup risotto rice
1/4 cup white wine
1 1/2 cups squash
1/2 tablespoon butter
1 cup mushrooms, sliced
1 sprig fresh rosemary
1 1/2 cups cooked squash
1/2 cup grated sharp cheese (I used aged Gouda)
salt and pepper to taste

1. Heat the chicken stock and keep it simmering as you cook the risotto.
2. Cut the onion in half lengthwise, and chop one half finely and the other half in thin half rings.
3. In a cast iron or non-stick skillet, heat the butter, add the rosemary spring, then the mushrooms.
4. Fry the mushrooms until they start releasing their moisture, then add the onion half rings. Continue to fry until the mushrooms and onions begin to brown. Then set aside.
5. In a heavy saucepan, heat the olive oil and sauté the chopped onions until glassy.
6. Add the rice, stir and cook for a minute.
7. Add the wine, stirring constantly.
8. When it is absorbed, add a ladle of stock, and continue to stir as it is absorbed.
9. Repeat until the rice is almost soft, with just a little bite at the core. It will probably take about 20 minutes and use all the stock to get to this point.
10. Add the cooked squash to the rice, mix thoroughly  and heat through.
11. Fold in the grated cheese until it melts.
12. Remove the rosemary spring from the mushrooms and onions.
13. Serve the risotto topped by the mushrooms and onions.